


Shards of Silver

by Fionavar



Category: Neverwinter Nights
Genre: Angst, F/M, Poetry, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-12
Updated: 2013-11-29
Packaged: 2017-12-29 03:49:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1000514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fionavar/pseuds/Fionavar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A number of stories, fragments and other miscellanea that didn't make it into 'All It Takes' for one reason or another. Updated irregularly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. After the Wall: Tarva

Something I cannot name lingers

in the silence between

us. Your hands are warm, resting,

still on my shoulders. I don't understand

the comfort of your touch.

 

I was lost

shattered in the screaming

of uncounted souls

and the devouring Wall.

 

I was both

and the Wall knew it, the souls

also, and being both of them

(Wall and soul, Hunger

and devoured, they end the same way

endlessly) there was nothing left

but to be dissolved and unmade.

 

It hurts, to be made nothing.

 

It hurts, to be made

to be.

 

To be torn from unity

and oblivion in the screams

 

into silence.

Your gift.

 

To be surrounded

and shaped by the circle

the strength of your arms. Clasped

against your heartbeat, held

as nobody has ever held me before.

 

There is danger here

I was taught. I have never

felt so safe.

 

I don't understand

Gann.


	2. The Night Before the Crusade: Tarva

This is the end. I have told you,

made you believe this bitter-salt truth;

it is the end we face tomorrow. And yet

you sleep so calmly. In the moonlight

your lips (they have touched me

only three times, and each time

with more of your heart's weight)

curve softly.

 

Perhaps you wander far away

dreamwalker

to dream of a future we can share. I wish

I could join you there. I can

only watch its clouds

drift across your sleep.

 

Perhaps you dream instead

that we can win. Our rebellion will succeed,

be forgiven by the god of death. Why fear?

you believe he has no power. You closed your eyes

so long ago

and I wait for them to open.

 

Perhaps you only remember moments

in that gleaming silver shard

of time, caught

between the night you woke me to love

and tonight when I hurt you

with the truth.

 

I know

no sharper weapon

no deeper wound.

 

I wish I had words to shape

you, Gann, to show you the quicksilver

and moonlight of your hair. You look

a dream that fades on waking,

as frail. I know your strength. My heart

aches to remember. You, too will be lost

destroyed.

 

I will keep vigil over you. I will

carry the memory and heavy truth

 

my love

a few hours yet before the end.


	3. Beneath the Red Tree: Tarva

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry. This was not what I intended. I have Duncan and Gann waiting to speak, plus an Okku story, more Gann and Tarva, maybe even Sand and Safiya. Another Tarva poem was never planned. I can only think it's her revenge for never giving her the POV; she wants to speak up somewhere.

I know the shadows well, but here

in this dream

he has shaped only light. Each leaf

of this tree blazes.

There are no shadows beneath this tree, none

under our feet

or lying black behind us.

 

His fingers leave a line

of sensation

across my cheek.

 

He looks surprised

as I am; that he should touch me

so gently

that I should allow him.

 

"Brave one,"

he says, this

he has called me before.

 

It's a lie, of course

it's one more piece of flattery

when he bestows a title

I can almost believe.

 

"Don't fear me,"

he asks, and I don't

know anything save that I should.

 

Everything my father taught me

to beware

he is. The seducer weaving words

to ensnare, deceiver -

 

no.

 

Although I do not

cannot, dare not

trust him

I do not think him a liar.

 

The curving line of his touch

is uncertain, tremulous

as his mouth

or the longing in his eyes.

 

I should not let him touch me.

 

Nothing holds me here, I am free

to step back or turn my head

away. He wouldn't follow.

He is a man who believes in nothing

save freedom.

 

He lifts

my face to meet his, and takes

one fragile, fleeting kiss

from my lips.

 

He takes

but it is not theft.

No stolen kiss, this

I know:

I am a fool, and weak.


	4. Alone: Safiya

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a prompt on tumblr from Jade Sabre: "Autophobia: fear of being alone or isolated or of one's self - Safiya." 
> 
> Semi-canon for the _All It Takes_ timeline.

I have never been alone.

 I have been isolated. I spent most of my time sequestered in my lab or in the library; it was preferable to dealing with my peers and their power plays. While I enjoyed teaching, even there I remained upon my guard. One does not become a student at a Thayan academy if one is devoid of ambition.

 I have been lonely. At first I had only the occasional company of Master Djafi, but later there was Kaji and his ilk. My mother was not a warm woman, and in any case, the Academy’s politics do not allow for the fostering of trust or for emotional intimacy. The physical kind is rare, too; a tool that a few do not scruple to use against those who leave such a vulnerability open. I learnt that lesson later than most...

 But I have never been alone.

 How to describe it? Imagine, if you will, a tower. You stand at its pinnacle, and you know there is nobody else within it. The bare, empty landscape stretches from its base to the horizon.  There is nobody there, either. You should be alone – but you aren’t, because you can hear voices. They’re hardly distinct enough to separate one speaker from another, or to discern words or meanings, but they’re unmistakeably voices and there’s meaning there.

 You wouldn’t think it unusual, because you’ve known nothing else, but you would look for them. You would wonder about your sanity when you could find no sources. You would panic, sometimes, or scream yourself hoarse trying to drown them out. Given time, you would grow used to them; you would even find them comforting. You would feel yourself less isolated, less lonely, while you could hear them.

 Certainly I did.

 And then, when there comes a flash of pain and the voices become quieter, you would fear. When fire burns across the surface of your mind and never touches your skin, when it fades and the voices fade with it until you can barely hear them at all... then you start to believe that they are abandoning you, that your oldest companions will desert you and leave you alone, and you won’t know who you’ll be without them, but you can only imagine the emptiness and silence inside your mind as a kind of death.

 And then, if you are me, you would refuse to think of it at all. I simply listened more attentively to that quiet murmuring and got on with my task.

 It was not without its dangers, that task. My mother’s last request had been to accompany the spirit-eater woman and to aid her – to look after her as if I loved her. Truthfully, that part surprised me... both as a request from my somewhat distant mother, and because it came so easily. For all that she was reserved and stubborn and could devour my soul if her control slipped for even an instant, I enjoyed her company. I liked being with her, and with the others who joined us to end the curse – the vain and talkative hagspawn, the multi-coloured bear spirit, even the evangelistic half-celestial with her ideals.

 Along the way, I discovered the truth.

 I am not a person. My mother never birthed me. I was brought into being as a splinter of another’s soul and left ignorant of my nature – a pawn to be played in a game that had lasted for centuries. The voices I had heard all my life were echoes of other fragments, a shared resonance that gave us the illusion of being whole.

 She stood in front of me, an old woman who had mutilated her soul to try and free her lover from his torment. A woman who had torn me away from herself, who had ruthlessly manipulated me and others I had come to care for, and I was unable to hate her.

 She was, after all of it, still me.

 And if her voice fell silent, if I no longer had her company in my mind... then what would be left of me except a shard of a soul, incomplete and totally alone?

 We left her in her sanctuary, and continued to the land of the dead. I am... proud to say that I never hesitated, although I knew that we were unlikely to succeed. Even if we did, ending the Hunger would also end the old woman. I would be alone, if I survived her destruction at all... but she would sacrifice everything to end Akachi’s suffering, and I... would take that risk for my friend’s sake. 

 I knew it when the curse was undone. Her voice – my voice – called his name and then fell silent forever.

 Cold, empty, alone.

 But she was there, my friend, smiling as she so rarely did, free and joyful and whole. The bear-god roared his triumph, the angel offered her congratulations, and the dreamer... well, he was less than decorous. I looked around at them, smiling myself, and decided it was worth it.

 Life is very different, now. I have friends – a woman who was once a spirit-eater, the dreamwalker who loves her, a bear-god dreaming in his barrow, others I have come to know. I have a lover, and I share with him more than my bed. Magic, trust, laughter – these things flow easily between us. If I have not misread my body, I shall soon share a child with him as well.

 There is silence in my mind, a silence I once feared, but I have never felt less alone.


	5. Touches: Gann

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a prompt on tumblr from steamboy: "Haphephobia: fear of being touched - Gann ."
> 
> Semi-canon for the _All It Takes_ timeline.

Reality is a place of consequences which ripple from every action. It is cold and heavy, its edges too sharp and far too numerous. It is subtle as a sledgehammer and frequently as pleasant. It is solid, immutable, far too bright and lacking in subtlety.  It is, not to put too fine a point on it, _real_ , and that Gann dislikes.

He prefers the world of dreaming, where he is master. That shifting place knows no boundaries, no certainties except those that he chooses himself. Its possibilities are limitless, its shape tenuous and gentle as fog, its colours softly opalescent. He shapes it to his will, and there he is _free_.

The harsh facts of reality cannot bind him in dreaming. If he walks the shore of the Lake of Dreams, he is one who left of his own will. There are those who will welcome him when he returns, who miss him when he’s away. If he wanders through the streets of Mulsantir, he is treated kindly and without suspicion. He is respected, admired, even welcomed.

Gann is straying closer to Mulsantir than usual, one evening. Almost against his will, he finds himself drawn to the misty rainbows of a maiden’s dream. He only intends to watch from outside, not to disturb her, but he feels the fierce shape of her loneliness, and it’s so like his that he cannot help but part the edges of her dream and speak to her.

She greets him with surprise and a blush upon her pretty cheeks. She tells him that he is handsome (and that’s news to Gann; while the glimpses of his face he’s seen in still water do not seem displeasing, he knows hagspawn are hideous and he is coloured like others of his kind) and that she is pleased to see him. The young men of Mulsantir treat her cruelly, she says,  for she is unlovely.

He does not think so – and her kindness would have beautified a far plainer visage than hers – and when he stammers over saying as much, she smiles. She draws closer to him, reaches up to take his face in her hands and press her lips to his.

It is the gentlest touch he has ever known.

The sweetness of it thrills through his veins and demands a response. Instinctively he gathers her closer. She is a good teacher and Gann an eager student. By the time their dream starts to unravel, heralding the dawn, his heart is so full of hope and joy that’s almost painful in his chest, for here at last is someone who accepts him. “I will find you,” he vows, mouth pressed against her hair. “Look for me today. I will find you, and we will be together, and neither of us will ever be lonely again.”

She laughs softly. “You are the nicest, strangest dream I ever had. I hope I dream you again some night.”

“I’m not-“ but the dream dissolves as she wakes.

It doesn’t matter if she thinks him only a trick of her dreaming, though; he will find her and that will prove otherwise. For the first time, he looks forward to reality.

Smiling, he goes into Mulsantir that day. The suspicious stares of the townsfolk, the things they mutter and the way their hands tighten about their weapons have no power to hurt him any more. He looks around the docks, up near the temple. He even risks knocking on the door of the berserker lodge.

Finally, Gann finds her down in the marketplace. He knows her immediately, despite the duller shade of her hair and the wine-red staining over her face, and he goes up to her stall with a light heart. “Hello,” he says, smiling down at her. “Here I am.”

“You,” she gasps, and the sheer _terror_ in her eyes is worse than any physical blow. “You... you’re not real. You’re not here. You’re not-“

“I am,” he says. “I promised you –“

“Get away from me!” she screams, and her father and brothers flock to her defence. Gann tries to escape, to break free long enough to somehow explain to her, to understand, but he is surrounded and they are merciless. The world narrows to fists and boots and pain and the single thought _what went wrong?_

-0-0-0-0-0-

Gann comes back to consciousness on a midden heap outside Mulsantir’s gates. His eyes are swollen to slits and the smallest attempt to move brings such agony that he loses consciousness again.

The next time he wakes, the pain is gone and he can open his eyes. A large telthor owl is sitting on his chest.

Geiborah, his first teacher, hoots softly. “I am sorry, child.”

The owl scrabbles down to his knee as Gann sits up. “What went wrong?” he asks miserably. “I thought – she was _afraid_ of me –“

Geiborah nibbles on his fingers; the sensation is warmth and a faint buzzing. “You have always known that the Rashemi are hostile to you, Gannayev, and to your mother’s people. Why did you think their hearts had changed?”

In a few words he explains the dream he’d shared. The owl-spirit twists his head, listening, and hoots sorrowfully as Gann finishes the short tale. “Oh, child,” Geiborah sighs. “Did you never realise it was possible to dream of something you did not desire in reality?”

It makes no sense to him – how can you want something and not want it at the same time? – but if Geiborah says it is so... “I’ll go to her again,” he says. “She’ll explain, it will be all right...”

“Gannayev,” the owl says, “you nearly died.”

He weighs this against the acceptance and the kindness she’d shown him before, and decides.

He finds her dream easily, but does not enter. She prowls about its perimeter in heavy armour, a hard expression on her face and a burning sword in her hand. Geiborah is right, then; she does not wish his presence. All the tenderness she had shown him belonged to dreaming. The reality of him is something that she will not accept.

He leaves her undisturbed and walks away.

 Over the years that follow he learns: if he walks into their dreams, they will believe him only a fantasy. If he says the right things, he will find a welcome. Illusions are hollow, but they are enough.

If nothing touches him, he cannot be hurt.


End file.
